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Cup of Joe: The Fact of The Matter Is, I am Pretty Drunk Right Now

posted on August 29, 2009

Toby Jones is a serial entrepreneur that understands successful small business tactics that have given him a competitive edge more than once. This man has the pulse of the people under his finger at all times. To put it simply, he is one with his market. He understands small business tactics so well that he can pull off stellar marketing materials like the one above while completely intoxicated!

Unfortunately, Toby’s innate talent is a rare gift among most small business owners. Most of us have to work hard everyday crafting the right message to gain the attention of consumers. And if you are not working hard at that, then you are probably failing.

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Cup of Joe: Personal Branding is for Self Serving Egotistical Maniacs

posted on August 22, 2009

EgotisticalAbout a week ago I asked Andy if I could be Marketing Pilgrim’s version of Paul Carr. He said “You can do a weekly editorial as long as you keep it clean.” I thought, “keep it clean? Well, I can try!” So, I put away my dirty magazines, grabbed a cup of coffee to sober up and began writing my first weekly Saturday editorial for Marketing Pilgrim! Stay tuned every Saturday as I share with you some of my crazy ideas and twisted thoughts on everything from internet marketing to social media!

Don’t let the title confuse you, I love Personal Branding & Online Reputation Management! Seriously, have you ever heard of another acceptable way to spend your time completely consumed in yourself? The truth is, I love myself so much that any activity that involves me optimizing my online image seems like second nature! Hell, even Andy agrees how awesome I am!

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Wolfram Alpha is Like My 5-year-old Niece

posted on May 18, 2009

Wolfram AlphaLast Friday the much talked about Wolfram Alpha finally went live to the public. The news of an impressive search machine that utilizes Natural Language Processing has captivated the world of search for quite some time now. Being a SOSG myself, I naturally couldn’t wait to get my keyboard humming with queries! Here’s what I found:

My first query was for my company’s primary brand name. This was when I realized that Wolfram Alpha isn’t a search engine by the mainstream definition. Instead of posting a list of web sites Wolfram’s software analyzed the term itself and gave a unique interpretation including the term’s etymology. This would be impressive to say the least, however, my brand name is a completely made up word! That’s extremely impressive!

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The Google Ranking Algorithm: Keep On Dancing, SEOs!

posted on April 10, 2009

Lego Dancing Are you an SEO that knows how to dance? If not, you better learn because for some, the name of the game is the algorithm-two-step. Since the beginning of SEO we have been constantly predicting and strategizing around an ever-evolving set of technical rules known to many as search ranking algorithms. In a way these ranking algorithms are the beat and tempo to our often times clumsy and awkward dance moves!

Some SEOs have made a real science into tracking and understanding these ranking algorithms. While others dance blindly into the night to be forgotten and lost forever. Rand Fishkin has been doing the SEO dance for quite some time now. Rand has recently posted his thoughts on some of the changes that the Google algorithm has taken over the years. Rand’s analysis seems to be dead-on with everything that we have seen and read over the years.

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Understanding Natural Language Processing for SEO

posted on March 16, 2009

Not long ago we got word that a new search engine will launch in May that will rely heavily on Natural Language Processing (NLP). And we have even heard Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, hint that the search giant would be implementing a greater emphasis on NLP:

Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while. (via)

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Skittles’ Social Media Campaign: FTW or Epic Fail?

posted on March 3, 2009

skittlesYesterday rainbow-colored candy brand, Skittles launched a new web presence that has caused notice by many in the world of marketing and average web-head-geeks a like. The Mars-owned company gave their site a facelift of sorts that has left some in awe and others in shock.

Now when visitors go to skittles.com they don’t see the typical corporate branded site. Instead they get a fresh serving of social media. The home page is essentially an overlay of search.twitter.com displaying results for the term “skittles.” There are several other navigational features that Skittles has added to point users to other social media outlets such as YouTube and Facebook.

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Social Networking Up 93% Since 2006

posted on March 3, 2009

Market research firm Netpop has released a new study today that suggests that social media is expanding at a fast pace. According to their findings social networking has increased 93% since 2006. This comes to no surprise to most of us that have followed sites like Twitter and Facebook that have seen unprecedented growth over the last couple of years.

However, one interesting statistic is that 54% of micro-bloggers post or “tweet” daily. Also 74% of the daily micro-bloggers are under the age of 18.

Apparently, 105 million Americans contribute to social media, but only 7 million are “heavy” social media users who connect with 248 people on a typical week.